Late Night at the Library

Topic: Come share your story of "Things I Want to Punch in the Face" taken from author Jennifer Worick's best-selling book of the same title.

A best-selling author and blogger will be the first of the Victoria College 2013-14 Lyceum speakers.

Victoria College's Lyceum Lecture Series will feature four speakers, including the nationally noted blogger, a science reporter/author, a former Army officer and White House Fellow who now works as a youth advocate and one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots.

The Lyceum Committee strives to present a balanced and interesting series each year that appeals to students and the community at large, said Dave Ticen, Lyceum Committee chairman.

"We bring in people with a variety of topics and viewpoints with a particular emphasis on timely subjects," Ticen said. "For our speakers, we look to people who are experts in popular culture, politics, history, economics, public health, philosophy, literature and current affairs to name a few subject areas. In the past few years, the committee has expanded its search for speakers to also include recommendations from the community at large."

Ticen said that one of this year's speakers - Nicholas Wade - was booked as a direct result of a recommendation from a member of the community.

Opening the series at noon Oct. 3 in the Victoria College Student Center is Jennifer Worick, a New York Times best-selling author of more than 25 books and, per Reader's Digest, one of the four funniest bloggers in the United States.

Worick has written about everything under the sun for national magazines and websites like The Huffington Post, Allure and Salon. She now writes a book column for Today.com and an entertainment tech blog for MSN's Popware. Worick also has a popular blog called "Things I Want to Punch in the Face" on Blogspot.

Nicholas Wade is the second Lyceum speaker and will appear at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Leo J. Welder Center for the Performing Arts. He is the author of several books, including "The Ultimate Experiment," "The Nobel Duel," "A World Beyond Healing" and "Before the Dawn."

Wade worked for Nature, a weekly scientific magazine based in London, from 1967 to 1971, becoming deputy editor and Washington correspondent. In 1971, he joined the news staff of Science, a weekly scientific journal published in Washington, and in 1982, he became a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, writing editorials on science, health, environment and military technology.

He was science editor of The New York Times from 1990 to 1996 and has been a science reporter at the Times since 1997.

Wes Moore, the third Lyceum speaker, will appear at noon Feb. 13 at the Leo J. Welder Center for the Performing Arts. Moore is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, social entrepreneur and host of "Beyond Belief" on the Oprah Winfrey Network. His first book, "The Other Wes Moore," became an instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Born in 1978, Moore and his sisters were raised by their widowed mother. Despite early academic and behavioral struggles, he graduated Phi Theta Kappa in 1998 as a commissioned officer from Valley Forge Military College and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001, where he also played football and earned a bachelor's degree in international relations. He then became a Rhodes Scholar, studying international relations at Oxford University.

After his studies, Moore, a paratrooper and captain in the Army, served a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. He then served as a White House Fellow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He serves on the board of the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America, Johns Hopkins University and the Phi Theta Kappa Foundation board of directors. He also founded an organization called Stand that works with Baltimore youth involved in the criminal justice system.

Moore is committed to helping the parents, teachers, mentors and advocates who serve our nation's youth.

Missy Cummings concludes the series with her talk at 7 p.m. April 17 at the Leo J. Welder Center for the Performing Arts.

A naval officer and military pilot from 1988-99, Cummings is an expert on drone technology and was one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots. She is the author of "Hornet's Nest: The Experiences of One of the Navy's First Female Fighter Pilots."

Cummings is currently an associate professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department and the engineering systems division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also the director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory and a principal investigator for the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Her research interests include human supervisory control, human-unmanned vehicle interaction, human-automation collaboration, human-systems engineering and the ethical and social impact of technology.